Paul Quarrington

A retired hockey player shares a nursing home room with the journalist who chronicled his life.

King Leary

Former rock and roll star never leaves seclued oceanfront mansion. Winner of the Governor General's award.

Whale Music

Three souls are drawn to the island of Dampier Cay: a millionaire who is spiritually adrift, a woman who has lost is all and a professional storm chaser looking for his last chance at fame.

Galveston

In Paul Quarrington's favorite childhood recording, a boy fashions a banjo from a cigar box, pluckily sets off for a contest in the next town, and wins with a song that weaves in the sounds he hears along the way: a bluebird trilling, truck tires whining. Years later, a writer and musician himself, Quarrington is suddenly diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and begins to ponder the path his own life has taken and the music it's made along the way. Quarrington ruminates on the bands of his childhood; his restless youth, spent playing bass with a cult band; and his incarnation, in middle age, as rhythm guitarist and singer with the band Porkbelly Futures. From rock n roll to country and soul, he explores how songs are made, how they work, and why they affect us so deeply."

Notes on Music and Life

Cigar Box Banjo

Des Howell is a former rock 'n' roll star who never leaves his secluded oceanfront mansion. Naked, rich and fabulously deranged, he subsists on a steady diet of whiskey, pharmaceuticals and jelly doughnuts and occasionally works on his masterpiece, "Whale Music." One day, upon awakening from his usual drunken stupor, Des discovers on his sofa a young alien from the faraway universe of Toronto. This girl has made the trek to Des' hideaway because she believes in the "Whale Music" and she's crazy enough to think that Des can make a comeback hit with his mad magnum opus--

Hoping to find meaning in their own lives by tracking a hurricane on a small Caribbean island, amateur storm chasers Beverly and Caldwell seek shelter at a resort alongside three locals while tracing both the storm and their own tragic pasts. 15,000 first printing.

A Novel

Storm Chasers

Received with almost unanimous accolades from critics and readers alike, Civilization is the amazing tale of Thom Moss, a young man who sets out in the early twentieth century in search of a grand adventure. He soon finds himself in the thick of Hollywoodland, employed as an actor by the renowned Caspar Willison, master of the two-reel cowboy flicker. However, Thom's fortune quickly takes a ruinous turn and he lands in the Penitentiary, where he writes the story of his downfall. At once hilarious and courageous, Civilization is a daring work by one of Canada's finest novelists.

And Its Part in My Downfall

Civilization

Few people seek out the tiny Caribbean island of Dampier Cay—visitors usually wash up there by accident. But this weekend, three people are flying to the island, not for a tan or fun in the sun, but because they have reason to believe that they might encounter something there that most people take great measures to avoid—a hurricane. A lottery windfall and a few hours of selfishness have robbed Caldwell of all that was precious to him, while Beverly, haunted by tragedy and screwed by fate since birth, has given up on life. Also on the flight is Jimmy Newton, a professional storm chaser and videographer who will do anything for the perfect shot. Waiting for them at Dampier is the manager of the Water's Edge Hotel, Maywell Hope, a descendant of the pirates who sailed the Caribbean hundreds of hears ago. As their stories unfold, the tragic underpinnings of Beverly and Caldwell's lives are revealed, a storyline that builds just as the hurricane looms ever-closer on the horizon. Cinematic and harrowing, Paul Quarrington's Storm Chasers is a tale of love and loss—and finding redemption in the eye of a hurricane.

A humorous novel about the longest overtime game in the history of hockey.

Logan in Overtime

As he cruises the Galapagos Islands in the company of his daughter, aged seven, and his father, aged seventy-three, Paul Quarrington ponders questions great and small. Equal parts memoir, travel book and good old-fashioned yarn, The Boy on the Back of the Turtle is a funny, poignant look at the mysteries of our universe.

Seeking God, Quince Marmalade and the Fabled Albatross on Darwin's Islands

The Boy on the Back of the Turtle

Paul rolls into Hope—Population 1001—late at nigh on his thirtieth birthday, on the lam from his wife and a surprise party he has known about for weeks He is trying to escape the Big city and get some serious work done on his second novel, but finds the diversions of Hope no less seductive than those he has fled. One of those diversions is the two-hundred-year-old legendary fish, Ol' Mossback. Paul could hardly pass up the chance to land such a fish. He puts aside his work-in-progress in an attempt to discover the mysteries of Hope, with all its quirky characters, and to finally be able to answer the question, "talked with Ol' Mossback lately?"

Paul Quarrington

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